


The Coward’s Way Out

by salienne



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-02
Updated: 2008-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salienne/pseuds/salienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The Doctor speaks in a quiet, urgent voice. “Jack, I can take the pain away.” His eyes pierce those of his once-companion, and his stomach clenches in something like fear, but not for himself.</i></p><p>After a particularly gruesome torture session, the Master leaves the Doctor and Jack alone in a cell together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coward’s Way Out

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through Last of the Time Lords.

They are left alone together in a cell meant for one person, a hard cot in one corner and a toilet in another. The rest is smooth and gray and metal, and the light in the ceiling flickers. It smells likes detergent and sweat. Jack lies, exhausted, aching, on the floor, and the Doctor sits along the wall opposite him. The only sound in the room is Jack’s panting; he has only just come back to life. He pushes himself up, cringing.

“He’s still listening,” Jack manages, because it’s obvious and easy and this is the first time he and the Doctor have been alone in months.

For a long moment, the Doctor looks at him, debating. He swore on that very first day that he would have just one thing to say to the Master, just one, and it’s his own quiet form of revenge that he lets the other Time Lord hear almost nothing but his breathing and the silence of his thoughts.

Jack is right. The Master would hear him now.

But this is Jack, and if there is any one person aboard this ship who deserves _something_ from him, it is Captain Jack Harkness.

“I know,” the Doctor says.

Jack’s breath catches, just for an instant. Then, groaning, he sits up and presses his lower back against the bed.

Another silence.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor says, and Jack can barely hear him.

Jack feels an urge to laugh the apology away, to shake his head and reassure his old friend that it’s fine, he’s fine, there’s no need to be sorry.

He can’t even smirk.

“Thanks,” he grunts.

For nearly a minute the Doctor looks at him, and Jack wants to say something more, but with his mind still swimming in the aftershocks of torture and rebirth, he can barely manage to stay sitting up. The Master hasn’t fed him in nearly half a week.

“How badly does it hurt?” the Doctor asks.

“Doesn’t matter.” Jack lets his head fall back, closes his eyes, and ignores the ache in his neck. “There’s nothing you can do.”

The Doctor knows he’s right.

And in his mind, he replays what the Master—his own fault, _his_ responsibility—did to Jack this time. Recently, the Master had taken to simply killing Jack a few times in a row with the screwdriver, apparently bored with his rechargeable pet. But today… today that was merely the appetizer. Today he’d come with a fresh appreciation for the slaughter, and creative as always, he’d been fully equipped with silverware, needles, his tie, candles, water, wires, and a pipe he picked up off the floor. Two and a half hours of that, and every moment, every scream, every drop of blood, every bit of sizzled flesh, the Doctor watched. He always watches.

It is his penance, his duty, and no one should have to endure that alone.

“Why did you stay?” the Doctor asks suddenly, surprising even himself. But he fears that answer, he has feared it for months now, and he has to know why Jack didn’t teleport away with Martha. He has his suspicions, of course, suspicions that terrify him, and he has to know that he is wrong.

“Oh you know,” Jack replies casually, not looking at him, “seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Jack,” and his voice is so so tired.

Their eyes meet. “If I wasn’t here, what would _he_ be doing to you? To Martha’s family?” He swallows, almost managing to hide the wince that follows. His throat is so damn dry. “I couldn’t go.”

Jack is well aware that the Doctor already knows all this, but besides his periodic chats with Tish and the taunts he exchanges with the Master, he doesn’t get much of a chance for conversation, much less for bonding, friendship, emotions, soul-searching. Hell, he barely gets a chance to sit down. And sometimes, just sometimes, a man could use a little acknowledgement, especially when he’s going through hell for the family of a girl he likes and a man who abandoned him because he _felt_ wrong. A man he loves.

The Doctor gets up and, slowly, bent over with a hand on his thigh, makes his way over to Jack. He sits down and puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Let me look at you.”

Jack smirks. “What? Couldn’t get enough of me from across the room?”

The Doctor almost smiles. “Stop it,” he says softly, fondly, and then he remembers. There’s next to nothing he can do.

But he can still try.

He lifts up Jack’s arm and bends and unbends it slowly. “This hurt?”

“Muscles are sore,” Jack responds. “It’ll go away in a few minutes.”

The Doctor nods. “How about this?” He probes a few spots on Jack’s arm, noticing the way the ex-Time Agent’s teeth grit together when he presses into the biceps.

“Like I said,” Jack grunts out. “Muscles. Sore.”

Again the Doctor nods, and he’s about to examine the next arm, then the back and abdomen, then the legs, when he realizes just how pointless this is. Yes, he can isolate the damage, damage that will fade and come back at the Master’s leisure, but what can he do about it? If anything, this is just some sick peepshow for the Master, watch the Time Lord torture the freak for free! He can practically hear the Master’s laughter in his head, and while it’s sickening, it is welcome too. At least there’s another Time Lord’s voice to hear.

The Doctor has an idea.

Oh, it’s dangerous, so dangerous it might have made him grin and bounce one day, long ago. But now, with the Master around, now there’s something real at stake.

He speaks in a quiet, urgent voice. “Jack, I can take the pain away.” His eyes pierce those of his once-companion, and his stomach clenches in something like fear, but not for himself. “Not permanently, but for a few days at least, maybe a week. But the Master won’t like that, and we probably won’t get to speak again, not like this.” He puts his hand on Jack’s forearm. “Do you want me to do it?”

Seconds rush by, seconds in which the Master could be storming down to the cell or chuckling as he watches them on some screen, and Jack doesn’t know how to respond. It’s not that he doesn’t trust the Doctor—he does, implicitly, even after all this.

What worry him are the consequences.

Tricky things, consequences. His entire life has been a string of neglecting them and being forced to remember. The first war he ever fought, he failed to consider them. Following that was the Time Agency, when they were almost all he was supposed to think about. Then his memories were stolen and he couldn’t have cared less, he gave them fleeting notice as a conman and a bit more with the Doctor. Now, on his own and with Torchwood, his life has revolved around them.

Nearly two centuries of nothing but consequences, and even on an airship orbiting a dying earth, he still can’t escape them.

If he does this, he won’t have to bear it all anymore, not hunger or thirst or torture or resurrections. He will be free for _days_ , maybe seven of them. That’s over twenty deaths he’d barely feel, fourteen meals and countless drinks he’d hardly miss. But after that…

After that, he doesn’t know what the Master will do, and while there is no doubt that he will continue to see the Doctor at his torture sessions, any possibility of another meeting like this, no matter how slim, will be gone. Just swede, water, guards, Tish, the Master and Lucy Saxon for weeks, months, years, eternity maybe. What will become of him then?

More seconds, twelve, eighteen, twenty-seven, they’re past half a minute now, and the Doctor’s aged face is getting grimmer. Jack has to decide.

“Do it,” he says, and he doesn’t care that it’s the coward’s way out. For so long he’s been the strong one, the one who comforts others or decides it’s time to surrender a little girl to maras or lets himself get tortured so someone else is safe. From the Doctor to his Team to the Doctor again, it’s never just been him, and he is so sick of it. God, there’s no guarantee the Master would leave them alone a second time anyway, and he hurts. He fucking _hurts_.

Seven days free of hell.

The Doctor doesn’t hesitate. His fingers go to the sides of Jack’s face and the Time Lord closes his eyes. “I don’t have time to walk you through this,” he whispers. “Just trust me.”

After a brief resistance—this is his _mind_ the Doctor is forcing his way into—Jack relaxes. _Just trust me._ He shuts his eyes. He does.

Then he’s sharing his thoughts with the man he’s loved for so many years and it’s warm and comforting but also swift and almost predatory. The Doctor is searching, rummaging through his mind like a conman through valuables, and Jack isn’t sure what he’s looking for. Then memories flash up, quick, like a malfunctioning slideshow, and they make his skin prickle, his head dizzy, and he can’t remember to be wary.

The slideshow runs.

 _The Master grinning with the laser screwdriver, pain in his chest, the gasp for life, blackness, his chest again, a shattering pain in his kneecaps, quicksand with Rose as his Doctor— the old Doctor—offers them a branch, holding Rose in his arms atop a warship in front of Big Ben, dancing with the Doctor, the army of gas-masked monsters, Taylor—bloodied and raw—screaming in agony, the first man he killed, his first drink, his first shag—both of them, Ianto, Gwen, Ianto again, that Cyberwoman, the Battle of Canary Wharf, Daleks in the sky, Toclefane, and more of the Master, so much more of the Master, and he’s staggering back into existence over and over again, shot by some idiot, by Suzie, by his team, getting trampled, falling before Asmodeus, before the Master. He gasps, his body spasms, and—_

And he feels perfectly fine.

At some point his eyes drifted shut and now they snap open, staring at the Doctor. Slowly, the Time Lord pulls his wizened hands away. His brown eyes are calm, rimmed in wrinkles and shadow.

And Jack feels perfectly fine, like he could flounce across the room, like he has slept and only missed one meal and he could dance with the Doctor or chase down a Weevil if he really wanted to.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice hoarse, and his throat doesn’t even feel thick.

The Doctor does not respond. With the door slamming, predictably, open, he allows his legs to fail him and falls onto his calves. Then guards have grabbed him and pulled him up and shoved a wheelchair under him and others are ferrying Jack around but he’s able to stand up strong now. He even pulls his arms away from his captors once, twice, elbows one man in the face and almost knees another in the groin.

Because now he can.

Then both of them are being dragged out of the room and there’s the Master, grinning, humming with energy that only comes with a madman’s fury. “Ooh, never should’ve left you two lovebirds alone together, naughty naughty! And here I thought I could trust an old man and a freak not to _bond_. Honestly, it’s like Gallifreyan porn without Romana! _Gorgeous_ figure on her, or used to be before the War. Last form I saw was so _old_ and _wrinkled_ , almost as bad as you! ‘Course you killed her then.

“And you couldn’t mention Martha Jones once, Doctor, not once? It’s like you sent her out there to die or something.” He winks at Jack. “It’s always fun, isn’t it, when a companion dies? Oh they always leave _you_ , but when they just up and die you get to pick out another one! ‘Course this one, this one’s like a certain sanctimonious Time Lord who thought he could stop me. Just no getting rid of him, is there? Maybe I should try _extra_ hard, see if I can’t get past that ‘no pain’ policy you’ve given him for the week. And after that…” He smacks his hands together. “Oh the fun!”

And on it goes.

To Jack is nothing but another annoyance, another string of deaths and hatred and almost nothing to offer him comfort besides thoughts of his Team and Martha and Tish and the knowledge that at least Rose, his innocent Rose, is safe. And it is the hope, _quite often_ it is the hope, that one day, the Master will struggle for air and fall to his knees while _his hands_ are around the bastard’s neck.

But that hope is an empty one, and even though it is frequently all that sustains him, Jack knows it is nothing but the darkest shadow, something he prays the Doctor did not see. He won’t do it, no matter how much he yearns to, he _won’t_ , he can’t.

Because for the Doctor, _the Master_ is hope. This hell, this apocalypse, it is just something to bear and forgive. No matter what happens, whom the Master tortures or slaughters, the Doctor will forgive, because he has to. Because at least now, the Doctor is no longer alone, stumbling through the silence of a fallen race. At least now there is someone to forgive _him_.

At least now—and they both know it, and it is so easy to see—at least now, there is another Time Lord’s voice to hear, and that Time Lord is worth it all.


End file.
